21 Random Facts About Peter Pevensie
by Rory J. Evans
Summary: Petercentric, mild hints at Peter/Caspian. These are things that Peter thinks and does after he returns from Narnia for the second time. Based on movie-verse.


Disclaimer: Still not C.S. Lewis.

I might make each of these into separate stories if anyone wants.

i

Peter isn't awkward; he moves about with grace. The boys hit him because they call it arrogance; he doesn't hit back because he knows what he's capable of.

ii

After he got back from Narnia, he signed all of his letters High King Peter The Magnificent and then was forced to scrap them, the wet splotches in the paper never making the crisp tearing sound, never severing evenly, only wetting his fingertips until _igh King Peter _was tattooed in ink across them.

iii

There's a cut on his right hip just over the bone that he touches just to make sure it's there. When he touches his left hip, he is devastated every time to find that his sword is not.

iv

He still checks every cave, knocks on every back door, stumbles by accident into every closet. Just in case.

v

He watches smugly on Valentine's Day, the ridiculous boys with their candy hearts and their flowers chasing after young girls - too much perfume, too much lipstick, too few clothes. He has known true passion and shakes his head idly wondering if he'll ever know it again.

vi

Sometimes when he looks in the mirror, he sees an old man. Sometimes, he sees a child.

vii

He wonders if he should consider himself lucky or cursed for getting a second chance at a lifetime.

viii

He used to run naked in the woods around Cair Paravel. He thinks that if he had more time, he would take Caspian with him.

ix

Sometimes in a second, he tries to imagine a whole year and thinks that if he shuts his eyes tight enough, he can almost see Narnia whirl behind them.

x

Sometimes he talks to animals. Sometimes, he thinks, they talk back.

xi

He makes anagrams out of the word Narnia - "Honestly, Susan, to pass the time" - hoping that just the word might have some magic of its own, that if he finds places like Aarinn or Nanira or Ranian, he will find Narnia. They don't exist, not even in the old books nicked from libraries or archives that he reads by candlelight; he checks. And in moments of quiet desperation he thinks that for everyone else it just means Narnia, but for him, it's Home.

xii

He makes anagrams for Caspian too, but only comes up with one: Peter.

xiii

Peter wonders how he could have been so fucking complacent and gets angry at himself. Susan winces everytime she hears a plate shatter and even more when she hears her brother's quiet sobs.

xiv

Peter notices that Edmund and Lucy look expectant. He tries to spend as much time with them as he can, not because he will miss them, but because he hopes that if they are whisked away into Narnia, he will at least be within touching distance and be able to tag along too. He doesn't think it works that way, but can't bring himself to care.

xv

Peter thinks about what it means to lay with other men. Then, he thinks that during war there is no time to lay anywhere.

xvi

Peter thinks they fit: gold and black, Telmarine and Narnian, King and King. He tries to think of things that fit now when it doesn't come to Caspian. He can't think of any.

xvii

Peter and Caspian went back to Cair Paravel the night before Peter left and picked out stars ("They're for forever, Peter. Eternal."). Peter tries to find their stars among the Heavens over England, but, instead, finds that the world has shifted and he doesn't know what to do to make it right itself again.

xviii

Peter doesn't think of Aslan when he thinks of the broken table. He thinks of Caspian spread out beneath him, harsh and hasty, stone digging into flesh, nails digging deeper, clothes pushed aside, vows that they would make it, would come back, still clinging to their fire lit skin, never forgotten, long after the battle was over. Peter thinks those are his favorite scars: the three crescents on his shoulder and the tapering slash on his hip.

xix

Peter thinks it's funny that Caspian had to blow a horn to make Peter come. He means to chuckle at the irony, but Caspian coaxes a strangled gasp from his throat instead and his body arches sweetly off the ground.

xx

Peter thinks he's crazy for thinking it was real. Any of it.

xxi

Peter doesn't want it to be the end, doesn't want it to end that way, doesn't want to find himself at a train station because he can still feel the lingering touches and flowering bruises and those in that moment seem more real to him than the train or England or the world.


End file.
